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FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH
Paper 1 Reading Passage
May/June 2006
1 hour 45 minutes
Additional Materials:
Answer Booklet/Paper
READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST
If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.
Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.
Answer all questions.
Dictionaries are not permitted.
At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.
This document consists of 3 printed pages and 1 blank page.
IB06 06_0500_01/3RP
 UCLES 2006
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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS
International General Certificate of Secondary Education
2
Read the following extract carefully, and then answer all the questions.
The setting is a remote jungle in South America. The character in the story is being hunted by the
authorities.
MAN ON THE RUN
Now as the storm broke and he scurried for shelter he knew quite well what he would find –
nothing.
The huts leapt up in the lightning and stood there shaking – then disappeared again in the
rumbling darkness. The rain hadn’t come yet: it was sweeping up from Campeche Bay in
great sheets, covering the whole state in its methodical advance. Between the thunderbreaks he could imagine that he heard it: a gigantic rustle moving towards the mountains
which were now so close to him – a matter of twenty miles.
He reached the first hut: the door was open and as the lightning quivered he saw, as he
expected, nobody at all. Just a pile of maize and the indistinct grey movement of – perhaps
– a rat. He dashed for the next hut, but it was the same as ever (the maize and nothing
else), just as if all human life were receding before him, as if Somebody had determined
from now on he was to be left alone – altogether alone. As he stood there the rain reached
the clearing: it came out of the forest like thick white smoke and moved on. It was as if an
enemy were laying a gas-cloud across a whole territory, carefully, to see that nobody
escaped. The rain spread and stayed just long enough, as though the enemy had a stopwatch out and knew to a second the limit of the lungs’ endurance. The roof held the rain out
for a while and then let it through. The twigs bent under the weight of water and shot apart: it
came through in half a dozen places, pouring down in black funnels. Then the downpour
stopped and the roof dripped and the rain moved on, with the lightning quivering on its
flanks like a protective barrage. In a few minutes it would reach the mountains: a few more
storms like this and they would be impassable.
He had been walking all day and he was very tired: he found a dry spot and sat down. When
the lightning struck he could see the clearing: all around was the gentle noise of the dripping
water. It was nearly like peace, but not quite. For peace you needed human company – his
aloneness was like a threat of things to come. Suddenly he remembered – for no apparent
reason – a day of rain at the American college, the glass windows of the library steamed
over with the central heating, the tall shelves of sedate books; that was peace. He had made
his own world, and this was it – the empty broken huts, the storm going by, and fear again –
because he was not alone after all.
Somebody was moving outside, cautiously. The footsteps would come a little way and then
stop. He waited, lacking energy, and the roof dripped behind him. He thought of the man
who had been following him, padding around the city, seeking a really cast-iron occasion for
his betrayal. A face peered round the hut door at him and quickly withdrew – an old
woman’s face, but he could never tell with people in this part of the world – she mightn’t
have been more than twenty. He got up and went outside; she scampered back from before
him in her heavy sack-like skirt, her black plaits swinging heavily. Apparently his loneliness
was only to be broken by these evasive faces – creatures who looked to him as if they had
come out of the Stone Age, who withdrew again quickly.
He was stirred by a sort of sullen anger – this one should not withdraw. He pursued her
across the clearing, splashing in the pools, but she had a start and she got into the forest
before him. It was useless looking for her there, and he returned towards the nearest hut. It
wasn’t the hut which he had been sheltering in before, but it was just as empty.
© UCLES 2006
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1
(a) Why was the man in the story able to see the huts in the darkness?
[1]
(b) From paragraph 2 give two words or phrases the writer uses to describe the way in which
the rain moved towards the man. Explain what each of your words or phrases tells you about
the rain.
[4]
(c) What was stored in the huts mentioned in paragraph 3?
[1]
(d) Re-read lines 16-18 (‘The roof…black funnels.’). Explain, using your own words, why the
roofs of the huts let the water through.
[2]
(e) State three things the writer tells you about the appearance of the woman.
[3]
(f) Explain, using your own words, what the writer means by ‘He had made his own world’
(lines 27-28).
[2]
(g) Explain, using your own words, what the writer means by ‘stirred by a sort of sullen anger’
(line 39).
[2]
(h) In line 11 why do you think the writer uses a capital letter for ‘Somebody’?
[2]
(i) Re-read paragraph 3. Choose two phrases the writer uses to describe the rain and explain
what each of these suggests about it.
[6]
(j) Re-read the extract and then write a summary of what the man in the passage did and
thought. (Write a paragraph of about 50-70 words.)
[7]
[Total for Question 1: 30 marks]
2
After this episode, the man falls asleep in the hut. Write a continuation of the story, describing the
scene when he wakes up the next morning and what happens next. You should include details of
both his actions and what he thinks. You should base your ideas on what you have read in the
passage, but do not copy from it.
You should write between 1 and 1½ sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.
(Up to ten marks will be given for the content of your answer, and up to ten marks for the quality
of your writing.)
[Total for Question 2: 20 marks]
© UCLES 2006
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Copyright Acknowledgements:
Passage
From THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Graham Greene, copyright 1940, renewed © 1968 by Graham Greene. Used by
permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every
reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the
publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.
University of Cambridge International Examinations is part of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department
of the University of Cambridge.
0500/01/M/J/06